Why I Still Listen To Radio

I was going through my email yesterday morning in the kitchen listening to WEHM over the Internet (via our Sonos system) and came across an email from Tony Alva with a link to Bob Lefsetz’ Radio Last post.

The Lefsetz post really isn’t about radio, it’s about how to market music in the world we live in today. And Bob argues that breaking a band on radio is the worst thing you can do if you want a long career. I totally agree with Bob. Radio isn’t where discovery happens in today’s world. It happens largely on the Net. But I also agree with Bob that radio is still the place to go if you want to hear popular music. As Bob says:

In other words, radio comes last. It’s the icing on the cake. It’s
the victory lap. It’s the seal on stardom. IT’S NO LONGER THE
BEGINNING!

I turned on WEHM yesterday morning when I could have played any one of thousands of records we have in our digital music system, or when I could have played any of one the millions of songs available on Rhapsody, or when I could have played neighbor radio from last.fm or popular tracks from the hypemachine. I did it because I felt like listening to WEHM.

WEHM has a vibe. It’s laid back, it’s mostly well worn music you love. It’s got a beachy thing because its east hampton long island. And there are artists that get played on WEHM that don’t get much play elsewhere. In a nutshell, when you tune into WEHM, you know what you are going to get. And it delivered for me yesterday morning.

Later on in our car headed uptown, we could have listened to our iPod. In fact, Josh and I were doing that earlier in the morning going to and from basketball practice (Tapes N Tapes – The Loon – great record). But heading uptown, The Gotham Gal and I had on WFUV and heard a great run of songs we know and love.

I agree with Bob. Radio isn’t breaking any new ground these days. I’ll go to the hypemachine and last.fm to discover new music. But when you want to sit back and listen to music you know and love, you still can’t beat radio.

UPDATE: I’ve cross posted this at Newcritics where you can find a lot more stuff like this.